Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Incidents of atrocities against Dalits in Haryana are
increasing, says Prakash Javdekar, Rajya Sabha MP and spokesperson of the
Bharatiya Janata Party on a television show to discuss the issue in the light
of the horrible incident in Hissar, Haryana, where a Dalit girl was gangraped
and her father committed suicide because of the humiliation.

He is from the BJP and there is a Congress government in
Haryana, so political grandstanding is inevitable.

“Crime being committed per lakh [population of scheduled
caste] is the highest in Haryana,” asserts P. L . Punia, Congress MP and head
of the National Commission of Scheduled Castes on the same show. Grandstanding
on his part is also inevitable, given his official position.

“Why is it that only Dalits get raped by upper castes,
whether it is Khairlanji [the 2006 carnage in Mahrashtra] or Haryana?” asks
activist Kancha Ilaiah, another participant in the show. He too can be forgiven
for being dramatic – he has made a name as a Dalit scholar and activist and is
expected to take a certain position.

But is it the job of the media to let all these
statements go unchallenged?

Does Javdekar have any firm numbers on the rise in
atrocities in Haryana?

We don’t know.

Is Punia basing his statement on some study? Can he give
any numbers on how many crimes per lakh of population, which is the state with
second highest crimes per lakh population? We don’t know.

Can Ilaiah back his startling claim with data? Are upper
caste men really raping only Dalit women? Are they not raping upper caste
women? Then what about the cases of rape of upper caste women? Who are the
perpetrators?

We don’t know.

Okay, so let us concede that Som, in his hurry to wrap up
the programme, forgot to ask follow up questions to the panelists.

But does a newspaper have that same excuse?

Punia repeats the same statement in an interview to
Economic Times published the following day (Tuesday) and that is taken as the
heading of a five-column anchor on page 2: Maximum Anti-Dalit Crimes in
Haryana: Punia. Once again, there is no attempt to ask him to elaborate. Nor is there any
attempt to double check on one’s own. The newspaper adds to the whole campaign
by saying “several cases of atrocities on Dalits have taken place in the
state,” mentioning the Mirchpur incident as the most serious. The only other
anecdotal example it gives (again no numbers) is of a wall being constructed
around a Dalit village in Hissar last year.

Som does fall back on one report. He mentions a 2010
report of the ministry of social justice and empowerment (the report is not
named), which apparently mentions that there is an increase in crimes against
Dalits between 2009 and 2010 in Kerala, Haryana, Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and
Punjab. But there is no mention of what is the percentage increase or
disaggregated figures on the states, which could, perhaps, show that the
increase in Haryana is more alarming than in the rest. In fact, the other
figures in the report contradict the thesis that Haryana tops in atrocities. In
that report, quoted by Som, Rajasthan tops the list of states with registered
crimes against Dalits and five states – Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra, Bihar
and Madhya Pradesh – account for 70 per cent of registered crimes.

When my boss got excited by Punia’s statement and wanted
me to do a story on this, I took the trouble of checking things out. I
downloaded the 2011 statistic of the National Crime Records Bureau. Here’s what
I found. In 2011 Uttar Pradesh topped the list of registered crimes against
Dalits with 22 per cent of cases,
followed by Rajasthan with 15.4 per cent, Andhra Pradesh 11 per cent, Bihar
10.7 per cent and Karnataka 7.4 per cent. Haryana is only 1.2 per cent.

The only report of the ministry of social justice and
empowerment report I could find online was the annual report of 2009-10, which
takes figures from the NCRB and that report too showed Haryana was way below
several states in terms of Dalit atrocities.

I couldn’t find any report on the website of the National
Commission for Scheduled Castes.

Maybe Javdekar and Punia were basing their statements on
some other data or reports, which they were privy to. Maybe Som had access to a
ministry report which is not online or I couldn’t find it because I didn’t have
the name.

Maybe Haryana does, in fact, top in atrocities.

For me, which state tops in atrocities is irrelevant.
Would it be better if some other state topped?

What is relevant for me is that people on television
discussions and newspaper articles, whom people will believe because they are
experts (as my boss did) are allowed to go unchallenged on facts and figures
they dish out. By journalists, whose job is to challenge people.

What is also relevant for me is that television and
print journalists are not checking facts properly and are satisfied with vague
numbers and generalized statements.

About Me

A journalist and committed liberal, who hates straitjackets of any kind and detests labels even more.
Author of The Backroom Brigade: How a few intrepid entrepreneurs brought the world to India. Penguin Portfolio, 2006.
Co-author of The Maruti Story: how a public sector company put India on wheels. Collins Business, 2010.
I tweet @soorpanakha